Pretty Food

I’ve not done a foodie blog for a while and since, I’ve had two lovely meals out recently, I thought I might share these feasts with you.

PRETTY FOOD MEAL ONE

On Mother’s Day, Mr. Al and my sonshine, Cole, took me to a local Italian restaurant called Abruzzi (http://www.abruzziarcata.com), located in the Jacoby Building on the square in Arcata, CA. It’s an old Italian restaurant with a beautiful wooden bar stretching across one wall. Lots of twinkly moody lighting as well. Their food is organic. They make their own pastas in house and you can watch them cook. Always entertaining. Their house salad dressing that’s stocked in all the local grocery stores is delish! It’s a bit pricey, but there are more expensive restaurants around this area.

For starters, I had a raw scallop with two beautiful sauces. Alas…it was gone so quickly I forgot to take a picture. However, I did take a picture of Mr. Al’s cold duck salad.

My main course was what I usually order at Abrizzi: Chicken Frascati….description from the website:

pan-seared chicken, capellini, sautéed mushrooms, pancetta, sweet onions, artichoke hearts, garlic, oil-cured olives and rosemary with Frascati wine butter. Yes goodness in abundance. I took half of it home to enjoy another night.

Cole ordered the spaghetti and fillet mignon pasta sauce, which he said was outstanding.

Mr. Al had the special, a pasta with sea urchin sauce. He let me sample the urchin–interesting texture (kind of melts on your tongue) and rather sweet. I’ve never tasted anything like it and can now see why starfish are so gaga over the little spiny dudes.

Dessert for me was the chocolate paradiso, which is your basic flourless chocolate cake with granache icing. The champagne mousseline is what makes it a paradise of yum.

Cole had the same thing, but Mr. Al was all about the blood orange cheesecake. It had a balsamic based reduction sauce which was very interesting and surprisingly complementary with the cheesecake (although, I doubt they’d serve it if it weren’t.)

PRETTY FOOD MEAL TWO:

Mr. Al’s birthday dinner was spent at Kyoto Japanese Restaurant in Old Town, Eureka. Kyoto’s doesn’t have a website, so no link for you. It, too, uses only local organic ingredients. When in season, they’ve got this amazing brussel sprout dish that’s amazingly yummy. I mean, for one to gush over brussel sprouts, it’s got to be something pretty fantastic, don’t you think? Yes! It is! But they’re not in season, so they weren’t on the menu board. Bummer.

Kyoto’s is tiny and if it weren’t a Tuesday night, I probably would have made reservations because it’s so popular. Usually, we order sushi, but this time we decided to go for a meal which comes with all sorts of yummy things like miso soup, cucumber salad, green beans, a potato cake and rice. For starters, we shared a plate of gyozo, the little Japanese pot stickers. You can see how yummy they were and how lovely they are presented. Pretty!

We also shared an order of Japanese pot stickers…gyoza. Don’t you love their ceramic plates?

And for the main course, I had the local cod that had been soaked in saki before cooking.

Mr. Al had chicken teriyaki.

For dessert, I’d baked a marble birthday cake that was made with ancient grains flour, adding chocolate chips. And it was shaped like a heart. Awwwww….pretty….. (although my presentation wasn’t quite like Kyoto’s.)

Have a great day, peeps! Next Sunday my book, The PeaceKeeper Corps, will finally be published! And four days after that, we are on our way to Colorado. I have earned this one, let me tell you.

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